Raw Deal: Home-mover finally draws a veil over mystery of the missing curtains as insurers stump up

JENIFER CAMERON is relieved that a three-month dispute with a courier company over three pairs of missing curtains has finally drawn to a close.

In September, the charity worker asked Inverness-based Capital Carriers to collect a parcel from her daughter’s shop in Dornoch, Sutherland.

The package contained handmade brocade curtains that Jenifer wanted delivered to her new address in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

She was told that this would take two or three days but when they hadn’t shown up after a week she began to worry the parcel had been lost.

“I frequently phoned Capital Carriers asking what had happened and at one point I was told the package had been passed to another company, Hermes, for delivery,” said Jenifer. “They had been tracked as far as Dundee but then they seemed to have vanished.

“I had recently moved from Dornoch to an unfurnished house in Aylesbury because of my work and I wanted my curtains up because it was coming into winter and the place was cold.

“The curtains are a few years old but they are my favourites and they cost me more than £900 to have them made.” Jenifer said she couldn’t get a satisfactory answer about what had happened to her goods from either Capital Carriers or Hermes.

“I felt that no interest was being shown about my problem. My phone calls, emails and a letter were largely ignored,” she said.

Jenifer said that when she first asked Capital Carriers about compensation she was told that the value of the curtains was more than their insurance would cover. So she wrote to Raw Deal asking for help to resolve the situation. “When I booked the delivery I was never asked about the contents or their value,” she said. “But the replacement value for the curtains would be £250-300 per pair so £750-£900 in total, which is a lot of money to find if I wanted to buy new ones.”

Capital Carriers wrote to Jenifer to apologise but said “the service that was booked did not include a signed-for delivery service”.

However, the company said it would consider her claim if she could provide proof of value for the missing items for their insurance. Fortunately, Jenifer managed to obtain copies of the receipts from the firm that had originally made the curtains several years beforehand.

The good news is that the insurers for Capital Carriers agreed to pay out. Jenifer has now received £987 in compensation and plans to buy three new sets of curtains for her new house.

“I can’t thank Raw Deal enough for your help,” she said.

“I don’t believe I would have been paid without your intervention.”